Along Came a Spider

him.
    “You’re right about that.” Sampson grinned. I could see myself reflected in his Wayfarers and I looked small. I wondered if the whole world looked tiny from Sampson’s vantage point. “Our boy send the Western Union?” he asked me.
    “That’s what the FBI thinks. It’s probably just his way of saying Merry Christmas. Maybe he wants to be part of a family.”
    Sampson peered at me over the tops of his dark glasses. “Thank you, Dr. Freud.”
    Agent Scorse was working his way to the front of the room. Along the way, he picked up Chief Pittman. They shook hands. Good community relations at work.
    “We received another message that appears to be from Gary Soneji,” Scorse announced as soon as he was in front of us. He had an odd way of stretching his neck and twisting his head from side to side when he was nervous. He did that a few times as he began to speak.
    “I’ll read it to you. It’s addressed to the Dunnes…
’Dear Katherine and Tom… How about ten million dollars? Two in cash. Rest in negotiable securities and diamonds. IN MIAMI BEACH!… M.R. doing fine so far. Trust me. TOMORROW’S big day… Have a merry… Son of L
.’ ”
    Within fifteen minutes of its arrival, the telegram had been traced to a Western Union office on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach. FBI agents immediately descended on the office to interview the manager and clerks. They didn’t learn a thing — exactly the way the rest of the investigation had been going so far.
    We had no choice but to leave for Miami immediately.

CHAPTER 20

    THE HOSTAGE RESCUE TEAM arrived at Tamiami Airport in Florida at four-thirty on Christmas afternoon. Secretary Jerrold Goldberg had arranged for us to fly down in a private jet supplied by the Air Force.
    A Miami police escort rushed us to the FBI office on Collins Avenue, near the Fountainbleu and other Gold Coast hotels. The Bureau office was only six blocks from the Western Union office where Soneji had sent the telegram.
    Had he known that? Probably he had. That was how his mind seemed to work. Soneji was a control freak. I kept jotting down observations on him. There were already twenty pages in a notepad I kept in my jacket. I wasn’t ready to write a profile of Soneji since I had no information about his past yet. My notes were filled with all the right buzzwords, though:
organized, sadistic, methodical, controlling, perhaps hypomanic
.
    Was he watching us scurry around Miami now? Quite possibly he was. Maybe in another disguise. Was he remorseful about Michael Goldberg’s death? Or was he entering a state of rage?
    Private lines of emergency switchboard operators had already been set up at the FBI office. We didn’t know how Soneji would communicate from here on. Several Miami police officers were added to the team now. So were another two hundred agents from the Bureau’s large force in southern Florida. Suddenly, everything was rush, rush, rush. Hurry up and wait.
    I wondered if Gary Soneji had any real idea about the state of chaos he was creating as his deadline approached. Was that part of his plan, too? Was Maggie Rose Dunne really okay? Was she still alive?
    We would need some proof before the final exchange would be approved. At least we would
ask
Soneji for physical proof.
M.R. fine so far. Trust me
, he’d said. Sure thing, Gary.
    Bad news followed us down to Miami Beach.
    The preliminary autopsy report on Michael Goldberg had been faxed to the Miami Bureau office. A briefing was held immediately after we arrived, in the FBI’s crisis room. We sat in a crescent arrangement of desks, each desk with its own video monitor and word processor. The room was unusually quiet. None of us really wanted to hear details about the little boy’s death.
    A Bureau technical officer named Harold Friedman was chosen to explain the medical findings to the group. Friedman was unusual for the Bureau, to say the least. He was an Orthodox Jew, but with the build and look of a Miami beachboy. He wore a multicolored yarmulke to the autopsy briefing.
    “We’re reasonably certain the Goldberg boy’s death was
accidental
,” he began in a deep, articulate voice. “It appears that he was knocked out with a chloroform spray first. There were traces of chloroform in his nasal passages and throat. Then he was injected with secobarbital sodium, probably about two hours later. Secobarbital is a strong anesthetic. It also has properties which can inhibit breathing.
    “That seems to be what